Heather R. White

Reforming Sodom: Protestants and the Rise of Gay Rights Heather R. White

Commendation Quotes: Important, gracefully written, and interpretively original, "Reforming Sodom" brings together two historical subjects--religion and gay/lesbian activism--that are often seen as not intersecting. Heather White makes notable new arguments about the collaboration between religion and medicine in the post-World War II generation and the ways religious organizing and activism intersected so thoroughly with the expanding gay liberation movement of the 1970s.--John D'Emilio, University of Illinois at Chicago Commendation Quotes: Rigorous, bold, and wholly original. Heather White shows no fear about entering into the most difficult terrain in the conjoined histories of sexuality and religion. This book moves me with its bravery, its specificity, and its complexity.--Kathryn Lofton, Yale University Commendation Quotes: Heather White argues persuasively that scholars in LGBT history underplay the importance of religion to their subject. She shines a light on how crucial it is to recognize that the Christian response to LGBT issues was complex, internally divided, and by no means entirely hostile to gay agendas.--Mark Hulsether, The University of Tennessee, Knoxville Marc Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index. Publisher Marketing: With a focus on mainline Protestants and gay rights activists in the twentieth century, Heather R. White challenges the usual picture of perennial adversaries with a new narrative about America's religious and sexual past. White argues that today's antigay Christian traditions originated in the 1920s when a group of liberal Protestants began to incorporate psychiatry and psychotherapy into Christian teaching. A new therapeutic orthodoxy, influenced by modern medicine, celebrated heterosexuality as God-given and advocated a compassionate "cure" for homosexuality. White traces the unanticipated consequences as the therapeutic model, gaining popularity after World War II, spurred mainline church leaders to take a critical stance toward rampant antihomosexual discrimination. By the 1960s, a vanguard of clergy began to advocate for homosexual rights. White highlights the continued importance of this religious support to the consolidating gay and lesbian movement. However, the ultimate irony of the therapeutic orthodoxy's legacy was its adoption, beginning in the 1970s, by the Christian Right, which embraced it as an age-old tradition to which Americans should return. On a broader level, White challenges the assumed secularization narrative in LGBT progress by recovering the forgotten history of liberal Protestants' role on both sides of the debates over orthodoxy and sexual identity.